Aquinas on the Trinity: Does the Father Generate the Son by Will or by Nature? Nature, Will, and the Senses of 'Necessary'

Orientation #

He opens with “the second one,” i.e. article 2 of the question on the notional acts, and closes: “we have to stop now and go on to another article.” Verified sources place the class in ST I q.41 a.2 (matched 9 min), with readings from two handout pages (“An Excellent Play” p. 18; “Shakespeare’s Exhortation to Use Reason” p. 5). The previous class treated the notional properties and acts, the next takes up q.41 a.3 and a.4.

The class, in order #

1. The five objections (“it seems that the notional acts are voluntary”) #

The point: Thomas lines up authorities and reasons for saying the Father generates the Son by will.

1. Hilary, On the Synods: “not led by natural necessity did the Father generate the Son.” His aside: “If Hilary had known Aristotle better, he would have been a little more careful” — “necessary” is among the words of the first of three parts of Metaphysics V, attached to beginning, cause, element, nature; Thomas will use that.
2. Colossians 1:13, “the Son of his love”; love is of the will.
3. Nothing is more voluntary than love; the Spirit proceeds as love; so voluntarily.
4. The Son proceeds by way of understanding as word; every word proceeds from the speaker through his will.
5. What is not voluntary is necessary; so if not by will, then by necessity, against Augustine (the Sixty-five Questions, “I don’t know if that’s authentic”). Sed contra: Augustine in the same book, neither by will nor by necessity did the Father generate the Son.

2. The body: “by will” in two ways (“designates the going along with only”) #

The point: “by will” can mean concomitance or source; the Father generates by will only in the first sense.

• A. Concomitance: “I am a man by my will, because I wish myself to be a man” — but not as an effect of my will. So the Father, as he is God by will (wishes himself to be God), wishes himself to generate the Son.
• B. Source or beginning: the artist operates by his will because his will is the beginning of the work. In this sense the Father does not generate the Son by will; by will he produces the creature (Hilary: whoever says the Son was made by God’s will as one of the creatures is accursed). Reason (Thomas, from Metaphysics IX first part): nature is determined to one, will is not.

1. An effect is like the form of the agent by which it acts.
2. A thing has only one natural form, so “such as that thing is, so does it make” — dogs to dogs, cats to cats, horses to horses.
3. The form by which will acts is not one but many, “as there are many reasons understood” (knowledge of opposites); what is done by will is such as the agent wills and understands.
4. So will is the beginning of things that can be thus or otherwise; nature of things that can only be thus.
5. “Thus or otherwise” is far from the divine nature (God is necessary to be) but belongs to the creature, made from nothing. Hence the Arians, wanting the Son to be a creature, said the Father generated by will — “a dangerous thing” when will designates a beginning. Hilary again: to creatures God’s will brings substance; to the Son he gave nature, “a perfect birth”; creatures are as God willed, the Son subsists “such as God himself is.”

3. Coriolanus on the causes of a fall (“nature not to be other than one thing”) #

The point: Aufidius’s three guesses at Coriolanus’s trouble map onto will, reason and nature. Pride (“which out of daily fortune ever taints the happy man”) = the will — pride can arise from some real excellence; a “defect of judgment” = reason; “nature not to be other than one thing, not moving from the casque to the cushion” = nature (casque = soldier; custom a second nature). “He’s saying the same thing Aristotle said: that nature is determined to one.” Reason can look at the opposite side (dialectic, rhetoric); will can choose to do or not.

• Aside: the bookmark is “Thomas’s bookmark”; a book on the Royal Palace of Seville.

4. Student question: the Arian error and the will (“Did the Father choose to generate the Son?”) #

A student: some Franciscans made the Son’s procession a procession of will; why is the Arian version a serious error? Answer: the error is making the will the source. Human generation may come out of love, and God made creatures out of love — “you should thank God that he chose you to be” — but did the Father choose to generate the Son? No. Is it agreeable to the Father’s will? Yes, in harmony, “but his will is not the source.” The subtle distinction will come in the replies. Digression on reason’s openness to opposites: dialectic reasons from probable opinions even to contradictory conclusions — Socrates in the Meno (third part) argues that virtue can be taught, then that it cannot; rhetoric teaches reasoning to opposites; debate teams argue affirmative today, negative tomorrow; a lawyer can defend or prosecute (a politician: “flip flop”). “Both reason as reason and the will as will are capable of opposites”: steak or no steak, too much or too little. If the Father chose to generate, the Son is in the class of creature. God does not necessarily will creatures — not necessary to his goodness, but suitable to it.

5. Replies 1 and 2 (“cum nollet, right, you gotta have that”) #

Reply 1: Hilary’s text is against those who would remove even the concomitance of the divine will, as if his will to generate were not present — as we by natural necessity undergo many things against our will: death, old age, defects (the old man in the package store: “never grow old”; he is 72 and “getting to see a little bit of what he meant”). The context shows it: non nolente Patre, non coactus, vel naturali necessitate ductus cum nollet. Leave out the cum nollet and one could rightly say the Father generates the Son by a kind of natural necessity. Reply 2: Paul names Christ “Son of his love” by antonomasia, as loved overabundantly by God — not that love is the beginning of the generation.

6. Reply 3 read, then Metaphysics IX laid out (“the will, in so far as it is a certain nature”) #

Reply 3 (first pass): the will, insofar as it is a certain nature, wills something naturally — man’s will naturally tends to beatitude; God naturally wills and loves himself, and toward other things has himself to opposites. The Spirit proceeds as love insofar as God loves himself, so naturally, though by way of will. “You can misunderstand this” — he gave a paper on it. Metaphysics IX (Latin potentia, his “ability”): three parts, ability, act, order of ability and act — like a book on marriage: husband, wife, their relationship (an oversimplification: part one treats abilities regarding motion, part two act universally, part three shows act simply before ability, hence God pure act).

• First distinction: ability to act upon vs ability to undergo; the former is the first meaning. Berquist in the ring with Cassius Clay: “no ability at all,” but “beatable, breakable, bustable” — able in a secondary sense; fire able to burn, paper combustible.
• Then natural vs rational ability (including will): natural ability determined to one of two opposites (fire heats, does not cool); rational ability, e.g. art, capable of opposites — the doctor can cure you or make you sick, make you thin or fat. Consequence: the natural agent acts when present to its patient (paper brought to fire burns), while the rational ability, being open to opposites, needs a choice, some appetite for one rather than the other. “A very fundamental distinction” — Shakespeare touches it too.
• Aside: “mistake” is close to “mixed up” — taking one thing in place of another; the beginning of our troubles is not seeing, or misunderstanding, some distinction.

7. What kind of distinction is natural vs rational? (“like two and three”) #

The point: the distinction is not like virtue/vice or hot/cold (no vice in virtue) but like two and three (there is a two in three) — recall the old way of naming: the number that is just two, and the one that is two plus one. Thomas sometimes says rational ability presupposes and partakes of nature; sometimes directly that reason, or will, is a kind of nature. So: we don’t choose to be happy rather than miserable, we naturally want happiness and choose among means; reason naturally understands some things. Hence “reason as reason” vs “reason as a nature,” “will as will” vs “will as a nature.” Three as three is not half of four, but the two in three is — no contradiction, not said in the same way. The modern misunderstanding: Sartre — nothing the will naturally wills, as free about the end as about means. Mill — nothing reason necessarily assents to. Source in part: the experimental method, where every thought is a hypothesis tested by consequences. Difficulty: test the axiom of contradiction and you test it by itself (“it is not so because it is so”). And confirmation by consequences is not a syllogism, so one is never certain — Claude Bernard: doubt is intrinsic to experimental method; everything “up for grabs.” Aristotle’s position: some things naturally understood, some naturally willed; so the distinction between nature and reason/will is like two and three — nature that is just nature, and reason and will which are nature but not just nature, open beyond that to opposites. Applied: the Son proceeds by way of understanding, by way of what God naturally understands of himself; God naturally loves himself and “naturally breathes this love.”

8. Replies 3 and 4 again; ethics; Lee (“naturally frustrated”) #

Reply 3 reread: those in hell are naturally frustrated, frustrated of what they naturally want; God wills other things for himself, his goodness in no way depending on them, so not necessarily. The Spirit proceeds naturally, though by way of will “as a certain nature.” Reply 4: the Son is not a thought God spontaneously thought up; in conceptions of understanding there is a reduction to first things naturally understood; God naturally understands himself, so the conception of the Word is natural. Missing this distinction is “a very fundamental mistake” affecting the whole of one’s thinking: in ethics the first thing is the end of man, which he naturally wills; Aristotle teaches more distinctly what that end is and how achieved — Shakespeare: the part of philosophy treating of happiness, by virtue especially to be achieved.

• Aside: Robert E. Lee’s sons’ recollections — a religious man resigned to God’s will; his claim that Virginia was on the way to ending slavery until Northerners interfered (“a bit of exaggeration”); after the war president of Washington College (Washington and Lee).

9. Reply 5: the senses of necessary (“necessary per se and per alia”) #

The point: Aristotle (Metaphysics V) gives four senses; Thomas divides into two, subdividing one into three [ed.: he says “into three” but Thomas’s subdivision as he reads it yields two, giving four in all], as with the ten categories divided into three then two of those further — “he always divides by two or by three.” Why: on the side of things, opposites are two (Plato always divided by two); three has completeness, beginning-middle-end, and in many languages is the first number by which we say “all” (both of my two children vs all of my three) — Aristotle, Natural Hearing book I, three is enough; beyond that the mind seems to enumerate rather than divide; where Aristotle divides into more it is for brevity.

• Per se, “through itself,” intrinsic: two is half of four, nothing outside two forcing it; a triangle’s angles equal two right angles.
• Per alia refers to the two extrinsic causes, mover and end (where Aristotle places “necessary,” right after cause and element):
  • through the agent forcing you — the violent; five guys carry you out of the room; no violence in God;
  • through the end — that without which the end cannot be (food for living: necessity from supposition, not absolute like two half of four) vs cannot be well (Thomas’s horse for a journey; a car to the Cape; steak and wine). God has no end; he is the end of all things. Conclusion: divine generation is necessary in neither of these ways — no coercion, no end — but per se, as “not able not to be,” as it is necessary for God to be, because God naturally and necessarily understands himself. Digression on logic: is logic necessary for philosophy? Albert the Great: the first philosophers erred for want of it; yet logic was among the last parts investigated. Phaedo: on his last day Socrates jokes the question of immortality can hardly be irrelevant (and it bears on how one lives); when Simmias and Cebes’ objections make his argument collapse he says we need an art about arguments — good vs bad, and among good, necessary vs probable — anticipating Aristotle: Prior and Posterior Analytics (necessary), Topics and Rhetoric (probable), Sophistical Refutations (bad). So logic is necessary to philosophize well; one can philosophize badly without it.

10. Back to Hilary, and closing (“not by natural necessity when he doesn’t wish it”) #

The point: Hilary’s text is to be read with care — the Father does generate by natural necessity, but not “when he doesn’t wish it”; Hilary separates from God what we suffer, things by natural necessity against the will (growing old; the woman in Twelfth Night losing her beauty). This is not a denial of natural necessity in God: the Word proceeds from God’s naturally understanding himself, the Spirit from his naturally loving himself. “You see how important that chapter on necessity is.”

• Asides: “In what sense is it necessary to understand the senses of necessary?” — like “in what sense of before does one sense of before come before another?”; a Colorado philosophy teacher to puzzled students: “Because your parents pay me.” “Did three articles. That’s enough.”

His words #

• notional acts; the acts (generation, spiration) the article asks about.
• going along with; his rendering of concomitance (“the concomitants”).
• beginning or source; his rendering of principium.
• Wisdom; his name for Aristotle’s Metaphysics (fifth, ninth book).
• ability and act; potentia et actus [ed.: potency and act].
• natural ability vs rational ability; determined to one vs capable of opposites.
• reason as reason / will as will vs reason or will as a nature; the “two in three” distinction.
• antonomasia; Paul’s naming Christ “Son of his love.”
• per se / per alia; “through itself” (intrinsic) vs through another (extrinsic cause: mover or end).
• violent; the necessary that comes through a forcing agent.
• necessity from supposition; if I am to live, I must have food.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• book about places [ed.: Topics].
• mistake ~ mixed up; taking one thing for another.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 2 — objections 1–5, sed contra, body, replies 1–5 (verified).
• Hilary, On the Synods (as quoted by Thomas), with the phrase non nolente Patre, non coactus, vel naturali necessitate ductus cum nollet.
• Colossians 1:13.
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act 4, Scene 7 (Aufidius) — from handout “An Excellent Play” p. 18 (verified).
• Handout “Shakespeare’s Exhortation to Use Reason”, p. 5 (verified; the line on philosophy treating of happiness by virtue). Mentioned
• Augustine, Sixty-five Questions (authenticity doubted).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (necessary; cause, element, nature) and IX (three parts; ability to act/undergo; natural/rational).
• Aristotle, Physics I (three is enough); Prior/Posterior Analytics, Topics, Rhetoric, Sophistical Refutations.
• Plato, Meno (third part); Phaedo (Simmias, Cebes).
• Albert the Great on the first philosophers’ lack of logic.
• Sartre; John Stuart Mill; Claude Bernard.
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Robert E. Lee’s sons’ recollections.

His questions #

• Is the Father’s wish the source of his generating the Son? No — the will goes along with the generation but is not its beginning; by will he produces creatures.
• Why is nature determined to one but the will not? A thing has one natural form and makes what it is; the will acts by many understood forms, so it can do thus or otherwise.
• Did the Father choose to generate the Son? No; that would put the Son in the class of creatures. It is agreeable to his will, but his will is not the source.
• Is the distinction of natural and rational ability like virtue/vice, or like two and three? Like two and three: reason and will are nature and something more; there is a two in three.
• Is that necessary per se or per alia, that two is half of four? Per se — nothing other than two forces it.
• Is it necessary for me to have food the way two is half of four? No; it is necessity from supposition, if I am to live.
• Is logic necessary for philosophy? For philosophizing well, yes; one can philosophize badly without it.
• Does Hilary deny that the Father generates the Son by natural necessity? No; he denies natural necessity “when he doesn’t wish it”; the generation is per se necessary.
• In what sense is it necessary to understand the senses of necessary? Left open (posed as a puzzle).